SM 101: A Realistic Introduction (6 page)

It may help to write down the following questions, one per page.

1. What, exactly, is the greatest problem right now? There may be several, but one is probably greatest.

2. What caused it?

3. What, specifically, can be done about it?

In SM, things are often happening on several different levels at once. At one level, the dominant is selfish and cruel; at another, the dominant is giving and nurturing.

Call a suicide-prevention hotline. The people who work on these lines can often help a great deal. They’re mostly trained volunteers. (Quality may vary; if you have a poor experience with one counselor, call back another time and talk to someone else.) They can do much to ease your pain, help you regain your emotional balance, and assist you in finding valid reasons to hope again.

(By the way, if your life is in good shape, consider volunteering yourself. The knowledge and skills I learned there greatly eased things for me and many other people I have since talked to over the years.)

Understand that the pain of the situation has probably caused you to lose your perspective. Further understand that the pain you’re feeling is likely to pass after a while. (It’s often, and quite validly, said that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.) If you can regain a realistic perspective, you are well started toward finding a workable solution.

A Tough Decision

I wanted to write this book for over a dozen years. Indeed, back in 1980, when I was trying to find a way to raise the money to go to medical school, I wrote an entire book-length manuscript on this subject and was working on finding a publisher. Another method of paying my way emerged, so I dropped the idea (for then, anyhow) and went on my way.

Later, I tackled it again. I worked on the first edition of this book from 1988 till 1992, and yet somehow hadn’t finished it. In fact, I “detoured” enough to write and publish three other books. I would work on it and work on it, and yet somehow it wouldn’t get finished.

And I knew why: I was scared to publish it. With the publication of this book, I would reveal myself to the world as a practicing sadomasochist. I dreaded the reaction.

The subject of sex makes a lot of people nervous. Many folks out there have strongly negative attitudes toward it. I learned that lesson very clearly with the publication of my first two books. A fair number of retailers and others refused to have anything to do with my books because of “the sex parts.” Understand that these were non-fiction books. Any reference to sex was put there with the intent to inform, not to titillate or arouse. That didn’t matter to them.

I plan to write a variety of books on ambulance work, humor, martial arts, creative thinking, and so forth. One of my biggest worries is that publishing this highly controversial book will forever stigmatize and pigeonhole me. Writing about sex is “different”; writing about kinky sex is “even more different.”

I worry that, no matter what else I write about, I will be known for the rest of my life as “the guy who wrote that SM book.” I don’t want this book to be the most conspicuous accomplishment of my writing career, perhaps even my entire life, but I must face the definite possibility of exactly that occurring.

Before he had a chance to say anything about the bruises on my butt, I said, ‘Doc, it was consensual,’ and that took care of that.

Faced with this problem, I considered several options. There was, of course, the choice of simply not writing the book at all. I could do very well by staying with less controversial topics. Yet the truth was that I wanted to write this book. Furthermore, many people out there needed, some desperately, the information it contained. I didn’t feel that I could just walk away from those people.

While I pondered whether or not to write this book, I also considered what form it should take. I considered writing it as a novel. I would present SM, and its basics such as consensuality, “disguised” as a novel. If challenged, I could retreat to “It’s only fiction.” But the truth is: It’s
not
fiction. It’s very real, and it’s all over the place, and it’s soon going to be even more all over the place.
Somebody
had to start talking about SM in a straightforward, realistic way. It’s not enough, and it makes for terrible fiction, to have the characters talking to each other when the real purpose of the dialogue is to have the reader overhear.

I thought about writing a novel in which a young woman enters a “bondage manor” for training as a professional dominant. My goal would have been to “train” the reader along with my fictional heroine. I couldn’t make it work. I may try my hand at SM erotic fiction someday, but I’ll wait until my “teaching piece” is complete. For now, I’ve decided I need to talk directly to my reader, so that’s what I’ll do. Hello there, Reader.

I thought about writing under a pseudonym, but my writing style is so distinctive that it would take about two days after publication for “the secret” to be found out. Also, I knew I would rather take the heat associated with publishing this book under my own name than have to live in fear of discovery - and eventually take the heat anyway. Finally, I knew there were people who would take evil glee in “outing” me as the author of this book. Giving them such power over me was simply unacceptable.

Finally, I had to look deeply at how I truly felt about SM. Did I, as an SM practitioner, truly believe that I was doing something wrong? I was very clear that I believed no such thing. Well then, why was I afraid to talk about it “on the record”?

The core truth was: I feared being ridiculed. Even ordinary sex is terribly easy to satirize and sensationalize. Something like this, for those already inclined to twist and distort, is just simply too good and too juicy to be true. I felt afraid of those people. I didn’t want to have to deal with them.

Furthermore, I have not lived a life free of controversy. I could be made to appear a near-saint, or despicable, by selectively choosing certain aspects of my life and presenting them in a certain way.

A pervert is anybody kinkier than you are.

Like the rest of you, I’m somewhere in the middle. I have my strengths and my virtues, and I have done things about which I now feel proud. I also have my full human share of faults and weaknesses, and I have done things about which I now feel ashamed. Like the rest of you, I work on improving my strengths and clearing up my weaknesses, and I like to think that I’m making progress.

One thing I’m definitely
not
ashamed of is my participation in SM. I find revealing it somewhat embarrassing, much as anyone might feel embarrassed at revealing what they do in the bedroom — a place where nobody looks dignified — but I’m not ashamed.

Among other things, I have a few friends that I’m not yet “out” to, and I’m sure there will be some chagrin on my face when we next meet, but that’s just part of the dues I’ll pay for writing this book. Also, I can just imagine the reaction of various people I used to work or go to school with. A few, I’m sure, will view my writing this book as validation of every nasty thought they ever had about me. I’m also sure that others, while they may join in ridiculing me, will secretly feel very glad that I wrote this — and quietly purchase it on their own.

It’s time for SM people to stop needing to hide. What could the people I feared actually do to me? Well, some left-wing feminist lunatic or right-wing evangelical nutcase might try to assassinate me, but I thought that extremely unlikely. “The Powers That Be” couldn’t fire me; I’m self-employed. They couldn’t revoke my professional licenses; I have none. (One of this country’s greatest strengths is that you still don’t need a license to write.) They couldn’t take custody of my children away from me; my kids don’t live with me. They couldn’t use what I’d done to alienate me from my family; I’m already “out” to them. In short, I’m about as invulnerable in this respect as a person can get.

So, really, the only viable choice was to publish it under my own name and just simply deal with what happened next. I expected that people’s reactions would fall into one of three categories: some people would object to this book and give me various degrees of flak about it; others wouldn’t care much about it one way or another, and still others would think this book was wonderful, and feel grateful to me for having written it. (That prediction has since proven true.)

So the question became: Would it be worth putting up with the flak from the first group in order to benefit (and, yes, get the rewards from) the third group? After much reflection, and discussion with trusted others, I decided that the answer was “yes.” In fact, the answer was not only “yes,” but “hell, yes.”

I wouldn’t accept your submission if I didn’t respect you.

Many, many people needed and wanted the information this book contains, and some needed it desperately. Many people who dealt with requests for information about SM, and knew that I was both a writer and into it myself, repeatedly (and a bit pointedly) mentioned to me that “there’s nothing out there” on this subject.

Actually, there’s some pretty good stuff out there, and I’ve included the works I know of in the “References” section of this book. Unfortunately, much of it was either (1) written by gay or lesbian authors, and was thus (unfairly) “dismissable” by the more mainstream aspects of society or (2) written by researchers who only studied it (but who didn’t actually
do
it), or (3) written as fiction, usually under a pseudonym, by authors who, again, claimed that they only fantasized about it (but who didn’t actually
do
it).

Much supposedly “SM” fiction in fact describes wildly unsafe, unrealistic, nonconsensual acts that no SM practitioner in their right mind would ever attempt. The movie “Blue Velvet,” for example, was widely referred to by reviewers as an SM movie, yet the virtually unanimous opinion among my SM friends who saw it was that this movie had essentially nothing to do with the realities of SM. One of the main problems surrounding SM is that the average person, having been exposed to such material, has a wildly inaccurate understanding of what’s actually involved.

At the time I wrote the first edition of this book, no “mainstream” (that’s code for heterosexual) person had yet stepped forth and, using their full, legal name, written about SM in an accurate, non-sensational, realistic manner from the standpoint of someone who actually
did
it. Since then, several more have, and I’m delighted to see them. If SM is to gain the acceptance it rightfully deserves then, just like being gay, bisexual, or lesbian, it is time to stop keeping it a “dirty little secret” that people need to hide. It is both unjust and morally wrong for people who practice consensual, responsible SM to live in a society where they must fear discovery of that fact.

Regarding the revelation of my participation in SM, I feel some embarrassment, but absolutely no shame. I feel a touch of chagrin, but absolutely no contrition. I feel a bit of reluctance, but absolutely not one bit of remorse.

The time is long overdue for the tens of millions of people in this country who share my interest in this form of responsible, intense, and, yes, caring form of sexuality to no longer have to live with the fear that their interest will be discovered and used to harm them by ignorant or ill-intentioned others.

When first got into SM I was convinced that 98 percent of all the people were going to be dominant. Hoo, boy, was I ever wrong.

For more than four years now, I’ve been about as “out” as you can get, and nothing terrible has happened to me — in fact, many very wonderful things have happened. I continue to refuse to hide.

My Very Own, Official, “Coming Out” Chapter

First fantasy. During the midafternoon of a late spring day in 1970, about a month before the Kent State murders, I was sitting out on the balcony of a Northern California house with my feet propped up on the rail, enjoying the sunlight. I was a 20-year-old, long-haired hippie who had moved out of the Haight-Ashbury slightly less than a year before. My “old lady” and I were “crashing” (please excuse the sixties terminology) indefinitely with some friends at a large house in the “notorious hippie haven” of Cotati, California — located about an hour north of San Francisco.

The combination of the warming sunlight and gentle breezes felt luxurious. I leaned back in my chair and let drowsiness sweep over me. My mind began to drift as I lazed in the chair, and a number of images floated through. One image that stopped and focused itself more and more clearly was of me sitting in a chair. My old lady was naked and down on her knees in front of me, and she was energetically sucking my cock. That was definitely an image I could “groove” with, so I focused in on it some more. If memory serves, a grin spread across my face. And it was right about then that I looked at the image closely enough to see, to my utter shock, that her wrists were tied behind her back with a small, black cord.

My eyes popped open and my feet came down off the rail. I sat bolt upright and blurted out loud to the only person there, me, “Where the hell did
that
come from?”

I had no idea. I had absolutely no idea. I had never fantasized about anything like that before. The only time I had ever done anything like that was about two years before when I was living in New York’s East Village. A lady I met there once asked me to tie her up while we had sex. I did so (as best I could in my then-fumbling manner) and I enjoyed the sex, but the tying-up part aroused nothing at all in me other than vague uneasiness. So this wasn’t anything I had a prior interest in.

The rest of the world has absolutely no concept of what a warm, loving, and intimate act this is.

My old lady and I were going through a rough phase, but things surely hadn’t become
that
bad. Or had they? I didn’t think so.